MATTERS OF LIFE AND DEATH

Verdict watch: Gosnell in solitary confinement

'Snipping babies' heads is frowned upon by felons'

Editor’s Note: The graphic descriptions and images here may be upsetting to readers.

PHILADELPHIA – As he awaits the verdict in his abortion murder trial, Philadelphia practitioner Kermit Gosnell is in solitary confinement.

It seems, according to a Twitchy report, that it’s for his own protection, because “‘snipping babies’ heads is frowned upon by felons.”

LifeNews.com noted rapists, child abusers and gang snitches are seen as the lowest of prisoners and often are held in solitary for their own safety.

Gosnell is being held at Curran-Fromhold Correctional Facility in Philadelphia

The jury got the case from Judge Jeffrey Minehart on Tuesday. It is wading through a 30-page jury form that includes two dozen counts of violating the state’s abortion limits as well as five murder counts. The include four first-degree counts for babies who, according to evidence, were killed after they were born alive.

The fifth murder count, a third-degree charge, is for the death of a woman who suffered complications from an abortion at Gosnell’s hands.

Defense lawyer Jack McMahon did not have his client testify, so jurors must make up their minds based on the prosecution’s five weeks of evidence from witnesses who reported the babies moved, breathed and cried out after being born.

But McMahon contended before the jury that none of the babies was born alive. He blamed the woman who died, Karnamaya Mongar, a 41-year-old Bhutanese immigrant, for having respiratory issues that could have caused her death.

The case, he charged, centers on a “targeted, elitist and racist prosecution” because his client is black. He said Gosnell’s 16,000 abortions over his career actually had fewer complications than other abortion businesses. He said it’s unfair to expect the inner-city, cash-only business to look like the Mayo Clinic.

Minehart told jurors they must focus on how the evidence and testimony relates to Pennsylvania’s 24-week abortion statute, the 24-hour waiting period statute and the personhood statutes.

Kermit Gosnell

But among the witnesses brought in by Prosecutor Ed Cameron was Steve Massof, who worked for Gosnell doing abortion procedures without a license.

He had testified that the standards were dismal and that Gosnell would talk on his Bluetooth device while doing procedures.

The custodian for the business, Jim Johnson, testified the toilets were always stopping up “from baby parts.”

The case began three years ago when investigators looking into allegations of drug-law violations found pieces of aborted babies stored in the freezer, in jars and elsewhere. Blood was on the floor, equipment was inoperable and the business had not been inspected in more than a decade.

State regulators shut down Gosnell’s Women’s Medical Society at that point.

A year later, a grand jury report described the operation as rife with contamination, and the district attorney’s description of a “house of horrors” followed.

The case alleges illegal late-term procedures produced millions of dollars of income for Gosnell. It charges that the “nurses” on duty were untrained but told to hand out labor-inducing drugs and painkillers.

The grand jury took note of the absence of sterilized of instruments and found “disposable” supplies were used repeatedly. Jars, bottles and boxes holding aborted babies were discovered around the building.

Sketch of courtroom drama by Operation Rescue.

Cats were allowed to roam freely over the blood-stained furniture and blankets, which smelled of urine, the report said.

Gosnell pleaded not guilty, and prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for the deaths of the infants. Prosecutors say the procedures were not abortion, because Gosnell would induce labor, deliver the infants and then snip their spinal cords to kill them.

Already, eight other workers from the business have pleaded guilty to criminal activity.

Cameron’s closing arguments focused on the law.

“Pennsylvania law requires that once a baby leaves the mother, he be treated with dignity and respect like a human being,” Cameron said. “But the question we need to ask that man sitting over at the table: Are you human? To med these women up and to cut these babies’ necks is not human.”

He told the jury his dog, when put to sleep, was treated better than the women and babies in Gosnell’s business.

“Those babies didn’t stand a chance,” Cameron told the jury.

One clinic worker, Kareema Cross, testified one of the babies was born into a toilet.

“I saw the baby in the toilet. It moved. It breathed. It had a head as big as a pancake,” Cross testified.

Priests for Life national director Father Frank Pavone said the case reveals the truth of the abortion industry.

“When we hear the things that are in the grand jury report, that are coming out in the testimony, sadly nothing is shocking us because we’ve heard it all before,” Pavone said. “It’s like a tune that’s been played for decades.

“I’ve been saying that this is not the exception, this (the details of the Gosnell case) is the norm. I wrote a piece for the ‘Philadelphia Inquirer’ that they published recently that shows, and I quoted Peter Singer, the controversial ethicist.” Pavone said. “He said birth cannot be so significant of a moral dividing line. In other words, if you can kill the baby before birth, it’s the same baby after birth.

“So the question Singer said is that there are only two consistent positions. There’s ‘A,’ oppose abortion, or ‘B’ allow infanticide. Now when Roe v. Wade says the unborn is not a person, why can’t you flush it down the toilet? If it’s just medical waste, then like all these abortion clinics, they just throw the babies in the trash,” Pavone said.

Filthy Gosnell waiting room, recorded by LifeNews.com.

“This case is all a logical extension of what we’ve had ever since Roe v. Wade came down,” Pavone said.

McMahon told jurors abortion is bloody and horrible, but he argued that that fact doesn’t make his client guilty.

“When you see fetuses with a hole cut in them, that affects you. If it didn’t, something would be wrong with you. But that’s what abortion is,” he said.

“Abortion is bloody; it’s real. However, you have to decide if Dr. Kermit Gosnell is guilty of murder. You have to remember that he is presumed innocent,” McMahon said.

And he accused the prosecution of twisting information.

“They want to manipulate you. They are guilty of an irresponsible use of power and rhetoric,” he said. “Look at what they’ve done. They brought this chair, this furniture out of storage and put it in here for the court to see. They brought the oldest ones, not the newer ones.

“Then they showed us photos of cats, bloody instruments, and bloody sheets. They didn’t show you the clean ones. Why? Because they wanted to manipulate you.”

Cross also testified about one particularly large baby.

“She delivered and the baby came out big, about 12-16 inches. He came out, and Dr. Gosnell put him in a box, a plastic box. But the baby was so big his arms and legs hung out of the box,” Cross said. “Dr. Gosnell took the box from the room. After this, the baby pulled his arms together.

“Dr. Gosnell took pictures, then he snapped the baby’s neck,” Cross said. “Dr. Gosnell said that this baby was so big he could have walked me to the bus stop.”

Troy Newman, president of Operation Rescue, is calling the case a “watershed moment.”

“The discovery of his horrific practices helped shed light on an abortion industry that has run amok without oversight or accountability for decades, and has prompted significant changes in abortion laws and attitudes toward enforcement in several states,” he told LifeNews.

Baby Boy B, image at Operation Rescue.

Clinic worker Ashley Baldwin testified about watching Massof slit the necks of babies that moved or breathed ‘five or 10″ times. Massof, repeating what he had been taught by Gosnell, told her that that it was standard procedure to cut the spine in all cases.

Baldwin’s testimony:

Q: These larger babies, when Dr. Steve was there, did he ever – was he ever there when any of the larger babies precipitated?

A: Yes.

Q: Babies that would move?

A: Yes.

Q: So, Dr. Steve – what would Dr. Steve do with babies that moved?

A: The same thing.

Q. The same thing. And how many time did you see Dr. Steve?

A: A lot. He told me that – don’t worry about it. They are not living. It is just a reaction.

At one point, Cross testified, staff member Lynda Williams placed a baby on the counter, and it was breathing and moving its arms when Williams pulled on them.

After playing with the baby, Williams slit its neck, Cross said.

WND reported earlier that the discoveries at Gosnell’s clinic were startling. A partial list reported by WND includes:

Rusty and filthy abortion equipment has been brought into the courtroom to document unsanitary conditions.

Medical records appear to have blood and other stains on them.

Gosnell’s staff acted as though they were doctors, even though some had little or no medical training.

Medications, including anesthetics, found in the office had expired years earlier.

A defense attorney blamed a woman, Bhutan immigrant Karnamaya Mongar, for her own death, since she left several blanks on her medical form. Prosecutors said she spoke little English and likely was unaware she needed to provide information.

Patients appeared to repeatedly get overdoses of drugs for their abortion procedures, including Mongar.

Photographs of the bodies of babies, revealed gaping wounds in the back of their necks. According to testimony, Gosnell or staff members routinely snipped their spinal cords to make sure they were dead. Operation Rescue said: “The babies were all intact and had the appearance of being partially mummified or dried. The brownish-black skin had shrunk as it dried, revealing the upper spinal column that authorities say was pierced with scissors in order to snip the spinal cords of newborn babies born alive during abortions by Gosnell.”

Photographs were introduced of babies’ feet, or even whole legs, Gosnell had preserved in jars.

Prolife activist Lila Rose, whose LiveAction.org has released undercover videos revealing how abortion businesses say they would not help an infant born alive during an abortion, said the government needs to investigate the procedures.

“We believe in human rights for everyone – human rights for the child in the womb, the child outside the womb, and true protection and medical care for women. Not the brutality that goes on during these procedures,” she said during a rally Wednesday in Washington.

Congress also is beginning to consider further restrictions on abortions in the District of Columbia, as a result of the controversy over the born-alive babies.

“David Brewer, a former abortionist, tells his story: ‘I can remember that day watching the first abortion . I saw a little tiny head, and I saw a piece of a leg, and I saw a tiny hand, and I saw an arm. You know, it was like somebody put a hot poker into me . I had a conscience and that hurt. That was a very hard experience for me to go through, emotionally. So I did what a lot of us do throughout our life, we don’t do anything. I didn’t talk with anybody about it. and do you know what happened? I got to see another abortion. You know what? That one hurt, too. But I kept seeing abortions, and it hurt a little bit less every time I saw one. Do you know what happened next? I got to sit down and do one . The first one that I did was kind of hard. It was like hurting again like a hot poker. But after a while, it got to where it didn’t hurt’ (Testimony at ‘Meet the Abortion Providers’ conference in Chicago).

“So yes, I am not at all surprised that Dr. Gosnell is cool, calm and collected, smiling even as he listens to those accusing him of murder. Abortion destroys the abortionists themselves.”